Allies

by Wolf Riedel

  “Did you get the local boss?” asked Mark.

  “Nope,” said Sal. “Couldn’t get a hold of either the CO or the 1st Sergeant. No answer at either home number. I do have their home addresses so we can swing by there or at the local armory tomorrow for a look see.”

  Mark thought it over. The weekend was throwing them a curve. They’d identified probable workplaces for each of the Lewises but the likelihood of making any significant contacts before Monday was low. They’d try anyway and see how far they’d get in Ocala before heading down to Tampa to follow up on the SOCCENT lead.

  “I should give SOCCENT a heads up,” he said. “There might be a security issue they need to look at.”

  “Call Jackson,” suggest Sal with a grin. “He loves calls from you in the middle of the night.”

  Jackson was Command Sergeant Major Devon Jackson, the most senior non-commissioned officer at SOCCENT and Brigadier General Phil Sambrook’s right-hand man. Effectively, anytime they had a matter at SOCCENT, Jackson became their liaison and facilitator. Jackson made things happen. He didn’t appreciate middle of the night calls, however. Still . . . Jackson should be called; should be called now.

  Mark stepped over to the dresser and picked up his Blackberry from beside the TV. It buzzed in his hand before he could dial.

  Sal lifted his eyebrows with a this can’t be good look. Mark keyed Send to answer the call

  “Winters,” he said.

  “Mark. It’s Phyllis.” Mark keyed the Speakerphone button.

  “Go ahead Phyllis,” he said. “I’ve got Sal with me on the speaker.”

  “Good. You’re both still up then,” she said. “We just got word that one of our patrol deputies found what we’re pretty sure is the Lewises’ car. Gary, Wayne, Tyron and I are all heading out there right now. You want to come with?”

  Sal rolled his eyes. Shit! Yeah! he mouthed.

  “We’ll be there,” said Mark. “What’s the location?”

  The trip had been a short one; barely nine and one half miles straight southwest from the hotel on SR 200 a hiking/cross-country bicycling trail running east-west, crossed the highway. The flashing red and blue lights of a Sheriff’s car at the side of the road marked their exit.

  Sal leaned his head out the window and called out to the deputy, “Sergeant Dunn here yet?”

  “You the CID guys?” A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. His lips barely moved as he spoke and it continued to hang on tenaciously albeit precariously.

  “Yup.”

  “Yeah, he’s here,” the deputy replied. “Just follow the dirt trail in. It runs straight into the woods for about a third of a mile. You can’t miss them.”

  Mark threw the SUV into gear and eased it off the highway’s shoulder and onto the narrow dirt trail. In the headlights, the sand looked hard-packed and, while described as a hiking trail, clearly showed the twin ruts of a rough and bumpy, wheeled vehicle path. A few twists and turns through some minor scrub and the trail straightened out as it entered denser brush and trees.

  Two hundred meters in and lights began to be visible through the trees. Almost immediately the trail became blocked by a string of cars parked on the trail. Mark backed up a few yards and made a three-point turn between taller trees as best as he could and backed into some thinner brush so as to leave the trail clear and to provide an easier way for himself to get out.

  As they walked down the line of cars Sal shook his head. “It will take them a half an hour to untangle this mess. Hope some Johnny-come-lately dipshit doesn’t block us in.”

  The scene had already been lit by portable lights and a generator from a crime scene van. Several coveralled techs were working the scene and a deputy checked them onto the site after they bootied and gloved up.

  Dunn noticed them approaching and waved them over.

  “Get any sleep at all?” he asked.

  “Nah. Making calls to the chain-of-command and trying to set up meetings for the morning.” Mark glanced over toward the focus of all the attention.

  “Learn anything?”

  “A bit,”said Mark. “We know the sergeant was working weekends at SOCCENT down in Tampa. We called them on the way down here to set up a meeting for tomorrow afternoon and will make a few house calls in Ocala later this morning. What have you got here?”

  “C’mon over,” said Dunn. With the car being found outside the city limits, it was clear that the Sheriff’s department was taking the lead at this scene. Mark and Sal followed Dunn over to the burned out car.

  “What is that? A Sonata?” asked Sal.

  “Yeah,” said Dunn. “It’s a 2005. It’s one of the first ones to come out of Hyundai’s new plant in Montgomery.”

  Mark tried to distinguish the original color of the car but the glare of the floodlights and the condition of the car left him to simply conclude that it had been a light color, maybe the ubiquitous Floridian white, maybe a light tan. Much of the metal around the doors, roof and engine compartment was exposed and charred. The trunk area less so. The glass had shattered and the tires burned away.

  “This should have given off a lot of smoke,” Sal commented.

  “If it did, no one reported it,” said Dunn. “If it hadn’t been for some late hikers coming down the Greenway we might never have found it.”

  “The Greenway?” asked Sal.

  “The Cross-Florida Greenway,” said Dunn. “It’s what this hiking trail is called. It’s part of the park system; folks hike and camp their way across the state.”

  “Bit early in the year for that, isn’t it.”

  “Go figure. Some folks like this stuff. Not me,” said Dunn. “Lucky for us there were three of them tonight that were pushing on to a campsite a couple of miles west of here. Anyway they came along the trail and the car was still smoldering and glowing in places so they figured with the fire hazard out here they should let someone know and called 911. Luckily one of our deputies got here before the fire department, figured out that this might be tied to the Amber Alert and convinced the fire department guys to hold off from ruining the scene.”

  “Do we have anything yet?” asked Sal.

  “Yeah, we do,” Dunn said. “The fire pretty much ate up the engine and passenger compartment but for some reason not so much in the trunk area. We’ve got some minor blood stains in there and scuff marks and scratches. The techs have taken samples and my guess is that the girls were in the trunk.”

  “No sign of bodies?” asked Mark.

  “Nothing.”

  “This doesn’t make much sense,” observed Mark. “Why go out here in the middle of nowhere. Would he stash a getaway car here? . . . Nah. This was the Lewis’s car so how did he get to their house? I presume there wasn’t a spare car found at the house scene?”

  “Nothing there,” said Dunn. “That makes it highly likely that we’ve got two perps. They come to the Lewis’s in one car, leave in two and then consolidate out here.”

  “Makes sense,” said Mark. “I bet they parked their car out of sight of the house and then took the Lewises’ car so that they didn’t have to drag the girls down the street in sight of the neighbors. They just bundled them into the trunk and drove out of the garage, got their own car and sorted things out as soon as they could find a quiet place to do it.”

  “Burned the interior to eliminate prints and trace evidence,” said Sal.

  “Your people have footprints and tire tracks already?” Mark asked.

  “Yeah you can move around,” said Dunn. “This being a trail there’s lots of both.”

  Winters took out a Mag light and started walking around the perimeter of the car. There were small evidence markers set out at several places. One set of prints—maybe size ten shoes, not sneakers—led from the driver’s door to the trunk. From there they led away from the car together with much smaller sneaker prints that indicated struggling and dragging.

  “They were alive when they left here,” commented Mark.

  “Yeah,�
�� said Dunn. He pointed to a spot on the trail about fifteen yards away. “They end over there. Tire marks indicate a vehicle coming in from the road, turning around and leaving.”

  “Your people able to determine if those tracks left going north or south on the highway?” asked Sal.

  Dunn looked a bit sheepish. “Not yet.”

  Mark doubted they’d find anything now considering how much more traffic had come in since then but one could always hope.

  “Think that there’s anything to this being off the 200?” asked Sal. “The 200 takes you straight down to US 41 and that goes straight to Tampa.”

  “Why would a perp come from Tampa to Ocala to abduct two girls?” asked Dunn. “My money is on it being a local who’s seen them, or knows the family.”

  Mark nodded. “I’ve seen enough,” he said. “We’re heading back to the hotel to grab a few hours of sleep if we can. Got a lot of folks to visit tomorrow.” He held out his hand to Dunn who shook it.

  Mark and Sal picked their way back to their SUV. Behind them, the lamps from the scene flickered through the brush illuminating the trees ahead of them with an eerie light.

  “You figure it’s locals like Dunn says?” asked Sal.

  “You never know,” Mark replied. “Could be that it is and Dunn’s folks should be able to cover than angle just fine. I’m with you though. Lewis worked in Tampa and his car was dumped on the way to Tampa. I don’t know of too many pedophiles that travel in twos and kill the parents of the kids they snatch. There’s more going on here and I’m not ruling out a Tampa connection.”

  CHAPTER 3

  S Bay Blvd., Anna Maria Island, Florida

  Sunday 04 Mar 07 0800 hrs EST

  A gentle land breeze was wafting in along the beach from Kurt’s right. It flowed out from Bradenton and over Tampa Bay on its way into the Gulf. Kurt sat on a deck chair next to his pool sipping his morning coffee while he stared wistfully out over the water.

  The weekend fishermen were already hard at it; charters taking the tourists out for an early stab at the beginning of the kingfish run while the local inshore crowd set their eyes on redfish, snook, permit and trout. Notwithstanding that Tampa was a sport fishing mecca, that Kurt owned a boat and that he loved eating fish, he rarely indulged in the activity. It bored him. The few times he’d gone out he’d taken a laptop along and worked on a file as long as the battery lasted. In expectation of which he always also brought a book to read for once it did. Waiting patiently for a strike wasn’t within him, a conundrum because his special forces background had certainly taught him patience. For him, however, the patience had to have a purpose and waiting to catch a fish that he could easily buy fresh at the local fish market simply wasn’t purpose enough.

  Kurt Richter, a Canadian Army infantry colonel who had served with Joint Task Force Two, the British Army’s Special Air Service, the Americans’ 10th Mountain Division and its 10th Special Forces Group was attached to the personal staff of Brigadier General Phil Sambrook, the commanding general of Special Operations Command Central—SOCCENT. Kurt’s career had taken a hiccup when he was wounded in Afghanistan and was sidelined for recovery for six months. Following his almost complete recovery—leaving but a big scar on his leg and minor ones on his face—Kurt had worked primarily in the field of intelligence but more-and-more, he had become involved as a troubleshooter for the Chief of Defence Staff.

  Kurt’s operational experience had brought him into contact with Phil on several occasions—most significantly on the slopes of Takur Ghar during Operation ANACONDA in 2002—and the two had become close friends. His previous exchange postings and attendance on the US Army’s Command and General Staff Course made Kurt more than conversant with the staff systems and fighting capabilities of the American, British and Canadian armies.

  When Phil was promoted to the rank of brigadier general and given command of SOCCENT, the four-star Commander of the US Special Operations Command—SOCOM, the Unified Combatant Command charged with overseeing all of the US’s special operations forces—thought that having Kurt on the SOCCENT staff would be an excellent idea. Much of this had to do with the fact that the operations in Afghanistan were changing. The Americans were putting their focus on Iraq while concurrently the Canadians and Brits were ramping up their commitment to Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar and Helmand provinces. Command of the region which had initially been under the US Operation ENDURING FREEDOM had transitioned to the more European centered International Security Assistance Force. With SOCCENT commanding all US special operations forces in Iraq and Afghanistan the benefit of having a staff officer conversant with both British and Canadian special forces was obvious. The Canadian CDS agreed and happily assigned Kurt to work with Phil out of Tampa.

  The posting was a rushed one but Kurt had lucked in and found a waterfront three-bedroom, three-bathroom house for rent on the north shore of Anna Maria Island. It faced Tampa Bay and massive Sunshine Skyway Bridge which spanned the Bay’s wide mouth. He’d briefly contemplated buying a place but every indication he had was that Florida’s real estate marked was way overheated; a big correction was due. Phil had warned him that the commute from there through Bradenton and up either the I-75 or the I-275 to Tampa and from there down to MacDill Air Force Base where SOCCENT and its superior headquarters, CENTCOM—Central Command—and coincidentally SOCOM were all located, would be a lengthy one. Kurt had tackled the problem by arranging a slip near the base at the Westshore Yacht Club. The house that he rented came with a boat and a slip in a channel just a few dozen meters away on the other side of South Bay Road. He kept his car at the Yacht Club for driving to the base and around Tampa and a moped at the house for trips around Anna Maria Island.

  “Do you want some juice dad?” came a call from inside the house.

  “Yeah. I would,” he replied.

  The voice belonged to Tara, Kurt’s sixteen-year old daughter who lived with her mother, Toni, in Kingston, Ontario. Toni was a psychologist who taught at Queen’s University and from time-to-time lectured on the psychology of terrorism at the Canadian Defence Academy. Kurt and Toni had been divorced for just over ten years now but fortunately, Toni’s problem hadn’t been her lack of love for Kurt but instead arose out of an aversion to the life of an officer’s wife that had grown over time as her interest in psychology had transitioned from the practical to the academic. Their separation had been difficult for Kurt but they had retained a more than cordial relationship for the sake of Tara who consequentially spent much of her weekend and vacation time at Kurt’s family home at Horse Thief Bay on the St. Lawrence River and, for the last few years, his apartment on the Rideau Canal across the street from National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa.

  The spring break this year for her high school in Ontario ran from the 9th to the 19th. Toni had been able to arrange an extra week prior to that so that Tara could be with her dad for two weeks and also spend the third week with Toni and her family in British Colombia. The teen had brought along the whole week’s worth of school work with her. She considered the fact that she’d be doing it on a patio, next to a pool overlooking Tampa Bay in seventy-five degree sunshine as a great improvement over the zero degrees Celsius—thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit—with a foot of snow on the ground, that she’d left behind.

  “Here you go,” she said as she handed him a tall foaming glass thick with pulp. “Man this stuff down here’s a lot better than the best stuff we get in Kingston.”

  “That’s probably the last of this year’s Navel crop. I picked up enough to last two weeks.”

  Tara had arrived late the night before at Tampa International. After the hour long drive in from the airport she’d gone straight to bed. She’d still been racked out when Kurt had started his day an hour earlier with coffee and a multitude of messages on his Blackberry; weekends didn’t slow the pace of communications in the headquarters.

  “So what’s on the agenda for today?” she asked as she sat down on a lounge chair.

  �
�I’ve got no plans other than a barbecue that Phil’s invited us over for tonight,” he said. “I thought you might just like to decompress and lounge around the pool today.”

  “Will Brian and Tracy be there?” she asked. Brian was Phil’s seventeen year-old son. Tracy, Phil’s daughter, had just turned sixteen herself.

  “No,” Kurt replied. “Tracy won’t be off school until next weekend and Brian’s still up at Benning. Did you know he completed the Ranger Indoctrination Course and was assigned to the 3rd Ranger Battalion at Benning?”

  “Yeah you told me at Christmas. Has he started Ranger School yet?”

  The year before Brian had been selected for West Point but had rationalized that the four years there would result in his missing Iraq or Afghanistan so with his father’s permission he’d joined as a private with a selection for Ranger. He’d been on continuous training since last summer.

  “He’ll start a bit later this month and should be finished this summer about the same time he turns eighteen,” Kurt said.

  “I bet he’ll be overseas before the year’s out. Lucky guy.”

  “How about you,” he asked. “Are you set for the summer?”

  Tara herself was following in her father’s footsteps and had joined as an infantryman in a reserve infantry battalion, the Princess of Wales’ Own Regiment. She’d just completed her Basic Military Training course but still needed to do her Soldier Qualification and Basic Infantry Qualification courses.

  “I’ve been told I’ve been loaded for SQ and BIQ up in Meaford. SQ should come right after school ends and go for three weeks and then BIQ follows right after for another five. That pretty much fills my summer vacation.”